The format of LIFE in 1936 was an instant classic: the text was condensed into captions for 50 pages of photographs. The magazine was printed on heavily coated paper and cost readers only a dime. The magazine’s circulation sky-rocketed beyond the company’s predictions, going from 380,000 copies of the first issue to more than one million a week four months later.[7]The magazine’s success stimulated many imitators, such as Look, which was founded a year later in 1937 and ran until 1971.

Luce moved LIFE into its own building at 19 West 31st Street, a Beaux-Arts architecture jewel built in 1894. It is considered a building of “outstanding significance” by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission. Later LIFE moved its editorial offices to 9 Rockefeller Plaza.

1941 | Kappa Sigma Epsilon fraternity members toss blankets out the window of their house in preparation for a spring “blanket party” under the stars at Kansas State Teacher’s College. Originally published in the May 26, 1941, issue of LIFE.

Row upon row of WACs (Women’s Army Corps members) don gas masks for a training drill at Iowa’s Fort Des Moines. Originally published in the September 7, 1942, issue of LIFE.

ALFRED EISENSTAEDT—TIME & LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES

1945 | On August 14, 1945 — VJ Day — a jubilant sailor plants a kiss on a nurse in Times Square to celebrate the Allies’ long- awaited World War II victory over Japan. Originally published (not as a cover shot, as most people assume today, but as just one in a series of “VJ Day victory celebration” images featured in the middle of the magazine) in the August 27, 1945, issue of LIFE.

On his 100th birthday, LIFE remembers Joe DiMaggio with photos made in 1939, when the Yankee Clipper was a 24-year-old star

Into the Woodstock Crowd, 1969

Forty five years ago today, nearly half a million music lovers descended upon a dairy farm in the Catskills for three days of peace, love and rock’n’roll. The year was 1969 and a total of 32 bands performed at the event that would make music history. But today, we’re veering away from the stages that Hendrix and Joplin immortalised and venturing into the crowd; the muddy fields, the leafy woods that shielded naked bottoms and the green hills turned parking lots where the flower children, beatniks, hippies, yippies and music lovers spent three days celebrating their youth.

Two LIFE photographers Bill Eppridge and John Dominis were there armed with cameras, delving deep into the Woodstock crowd. These are the moments they captured…

For festival-goers who were “lost” (dazed and confused), there were wooden signposts nailed to a tree with directions to the ‘Groovy Way’, the ‘Gentle Path’ and the ‘High Way’.

Despite famous reports that at least two women gave birth at Woodstock, to date, no one has ever stepped forward as a Woodstock baby. It’s thought that one baby was in fact born in a car en route to the festival, and another was born in a local hospital after its mother was airlifted out of the festival in labor, but the identities of these babies are unconfirmed to this day. There are nevertheless countless people who claim to have been conceived at the Woodstock festival.

More than twenty ticket booths were supposed to have been in place to charge the $24 admission (tickets bought in advance sold for $18), but those booths were never installed because of the overwhelming unexpected invasion of music lovers. Attempts to get people to pay were abandoned on day one, the fences were torn down and Woodstock was declared a free event.

Despite Woodstock being largely remembered as an iconic moment of bohemians living out the hippie dream, there was a tragic and sobering side to the festival. Two people died at Woodstock; one man from a heroin overdose and a teenager who was killed in his sleeping bag when a tractor ran over him. The driver was never identified.

Above, festival-goers receive medical care.

Hearing there was a shortage of food, a Jewish community centre made sandwiches with 200 loaves of bread, 40 pounds of meat cuts and two gallons of pickles, which were distributed by nuns. The U.S army also airlifted in food, medical teams and even some performers who couldn’t get through the traffic-blocked roads. Ironic, considering the festival mood was very much anti-war.

This is likely where our LIFE photographers spent a lot of their time; a sort of make-shift press area for reporters to type up their articles and phone in to their editors.

As dark storm clouds loomed, the crowd was urged: ‘Let’s think hard to get rid of the rain’ and they began chanting, ‘No rain, no rain, no rain.’ Unfortunately the heavens opened anyway and five inches of rain fell within three hours and the festival became a mudfest.

The performance of The Star-Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix that closed Woodstock was described by the rock critic from the New York Post as ‘the single greatest moment of the Sixties’. But because of the rain delays that Sunday, when Hendrix finally took the stage it was 8:30 Monday morning. The audience, which had peaked at an estimated 400,000 during the festival, had mostly gone home by that point and the crowd was now reduced to about 30,000; many of them merely waited to catch a glimpse of Hendrix before leaving during his performance.

We were ready to rock out and we waited and waited and finally it was our turn … there were a half million people asleep. These people were out. It was sort of like a painting of a Dante scene, just bodies from hell, all intertwined and asleep, covered with mud.

And this is the moment I will never forget as long as I live: A quarter mile away in the darkness, on the other edge of this bowl, there was some guy flicking his Bic, and in the night I hear, ‘Don’t worry about it, John. We’re with you.’ I played the rest of the show for that guy.

Annie Leibovitz, considered one of America’s best portrait photographers, developed her trademark use of bold colors and poses while at Rolling Stone.

QUOTES

“I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul – I don’t think this is possible all of the time.”

—Annie Leibovitz

Synopsis

Photographer Annie Leibovitz was born October 2, 1949, in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1970 she took a job at Rolling Stone magazine. In 1983 she began working for the entertainment magazineVanity Fair. During the late 1980s, Leibovitz started to work on a number of high-profile advertising campaigns. From the 1990s to the present, she has been publishing and exhibiting her work.

Rolling Stone Magazine

Photographer. Born Anna-Lou Leibovitz, on October 2, 1949, in Waterbury, Connecticut. She was one of the six children born to Sam, an Air Force lieutenant, and Marilyn Leibovitz, a modern dance instructor. In 1967, Leibovitz enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute, where (although initially studying painting) she developed a love for photography.

After living briefly on an Israeli kibbutz, Leibovitz returned to the U.S., in 1970, and applied for a job with the start-up rock music magazine Rolling Stone. Impressed with Leibovitz’s portfolio, editor Jann Wenner offered her a job as a staff photographer. Within two years, the 23-year-old Leibovitz was promoted to chief photographer – a title she would hold for the next 10 years. Her position with the magazine afforded her the opportunity to accompany the Rolling Stones band on their 1975 international tour.

While with Rolling Stone, Leibovitz developed her trademark technique, which involved the use of bold primary colors and surprising poses. Wenner has credited her with making many Rolling Stone covers collector’s items, most notably an issue that featured a nude John Lennon curled around his fully clothed wife, Yoko Ono. Taken on December 8, 1980, Leibovitz’s photo of the former Beatle was shot just hours before his death.

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Vanity Fair

In 1983, Leibovitz left Rolling Stone and began working for the entertainment magazine Vanity Fair. With a wider array of subjects, Leibovitz’s photographs for Vanity Fair ranged from presidents to literary icons to teen heartthrobs. To date, a number of Vanity Fair covers have featured Leibovitz’s stunning – and often controversial – portraits of celebrities. Demi Moore (very pregnant and very nude) and Whoopi Goldberg (half-submerged in a bathtub of milk) are among the most remembered actresses to grace the cover in recent years. Known for her ability to make her sitters become physically involved in her work, one of Leibovitz’s most famous portraits is of the late artist Keith Haring, who painted himself like one of his canvases for the photo.

More Accomplishments

During the late 1980s, Leibovitz started to work on a number of high-profile advertising campaigns. The most notable was the American Express “Membership” campaign, for which her portraits of celebrity cardholders, like Elmore Leonard, Tom Selleck, and Luciano Pavarotti, earned her a 1987 Clio Award.

In 1991, Leibovitz’s collection of over 200 color and black-and-white photographs were exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Later that year, a book was published to accompany the show titledPhotographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990. In 1996, Leibovitz was chosen as the official photographer of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. A compilation of her black-and-white portraits of American athletes, including Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson, were published in the book Olympic Portraits (1991).

Later Work

Widely considered one of America’s best portrait photographers, Annie Leibovitz published the book Women (1999), which was accompanied by an essay by friend and novelist Susan Sontag. With its title subject matter, Leibovitz presented an array of female images from Supreme Court Justices to Vegas showgirls to coal miners and farmers. Currently, many of her original prints are housed in various galleries throughout the United States.

In 2005, the Brooklyn Museum of Art did a retrospective on her work entitled “Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005.” As busy as ever, Annie Leibovitz continues to be in demand as portrait photographer, often capturing arresting images of today’s celebrities.

Annie Leibovitz is the mother of three children. At the age of 51, she had her daughter, Sarah. In 2005, her twin daughters, Susan and Samuelle, were born with the help of a surrogate mother.

Fact Check

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Original clip of scene in truck stop diner with a very young Jack Nicholson. It just doesn’t get any better than this. A woosieproductions edit is attached to end of clip.One of the most famous scenes in film history.

“FIVE EASY PIECES” SIDE ORDER OF TOAST

TRAILER FROM “DINER” 1982

THE BUDD LAKE DINER,BUDD LAKE N.J.

I HAVE BEEN TO MANY DINERS IN MY TRAVELS BUT MY FAVORITE OF ALL IS THE

BUDD LAKE DINER,IN BUDD LAKE N.J.

I arrived in America when I just turned 18. I came here to start a new life and get married to my American boyfriend. We lived in New York for seven years, and I never went to a diner. We started a family and moved to rural New Jersey. On weekends we would take the kids to the diner. I was smitten! The Budd Lake diner became our favorite. Eating the Gyro was on the top of my list, following close behind was their Clam Chowder and Corn muffins. When the kids were in school and my husband at work I would take my notebook and pen, slid into my favorite booth order coffee and sit for hours daydreaming and writing poetry.

I was divorced 24 years later and remarried to my poetry publisher. When we went on our many poetry reading gigs on the road we explored diners across the country, we had the best time of our lives driving the cities and small towns of this wonderful country. Many of my “road” poems were inspired by our travels. Many diners were explored, but few equaled the BUDD LAKE DINER!

This 1956 photograph was taken during the short time that two Nite Owls sat cheek-by-jowl in Fall River, MA. Soon the old lunch wagon was carted away and demolished, replaced by the gleaming diner. (Collection of Richard J.S. Gutman)

A Life Devoted to the American Diner

With a career spent chronicling the best of American diners, curator Richard Gutman

knows what makes a great greasy spoon

By Sarah Saffian

SMITHSONIAN.COMJUNE 14, 2010

What Jane Goodall is to chimpanzees and David McCullough is to John Adams, Richard Gutman is to diners. “I was interviewed for a New Yorker article about diners when I was 23 years old,” he says over a meal at the Modern Diner (est. 1941) in downtown Pawtucket, Rhode Island, one recent sunny Monday. “And now, almost 40 years later, I’m still talking about diners.” He’s gradually grown into the lofty title “important architectural historian of the diner” that George Trow sardonically bestowed on him in that 1972 “Talk of the Town” piece, progressing from graduate of Cornell’s architecture school to movie consultant on Barry Levinson’s Diner and Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo and author of American Diner: Then and Now and other books. But his enthusiasm for his subject remains as fresh as a slab of virtue (diner lingo for cherry pie).

Gutman leaps out of the booth—he’s compact and spry, surprising in someone who’s spent decades not just talking about diners, but eating in them—to count the number of seats in the Modern (52). Weighing the classic diner conundrum—“should I have breakfast or lunch?” he asks the grease-and-coffee-scented air—he boldly orders one of the more exotic daily specials, a fresh fruit and mascarpone crepe, garnished with a purple orchid. Before taking the first bite, like saying grace, he snaps a photograph of the dish to add to the collection of more than 14,000 diner-related images archived on his computer. He tells me that his own kitchen, at the house in Boston where he’s lived with his family for 30 years, is designed diner-style, with an authentic marble countertop, three stools and a menu board all salvaged from a 1940s Michigan diner, along with a 1930s neon “LUNCH” sign purchased from a local antique store. “Nobody has a kitchen like this,” Gutman half-confesses, half-boasts over the midday clatter of dishes and silverware. “Nobody.”

We finish our breakfast/lunch—I highly recommend the Modern’s raisin challah French toast with a side of crispy bacon—and head to Johnson & Wales University’s Culinary Arts Museum in Providence, where Gutman has been the director and curator since 2005. The museum hosts more than 300,000 items, a library of 60,000 volumes and a 25,000-square-foot gallery, featuring a reconstructed 1800s stagecoach tavern, a country fair display, a chronology of the stove, memorabilia from White House dinners and more. But it’s the 4,000-square-foot exhibit, “Diners: Still Cookin’ in the 21st Century,” that is Gutman’s labor of love. Indeed, 250 items come from his own personal collection—archival photographs of streamlined stainless steel diners and the visionaries who designed them, their handwritten notes and floor plans, classic heavy white mugs from the Depression-era Hotel Diner in Worcester, Massachusetts, 77-year-old lunch wagon wheels, a 1946 cashier’s booth. “It’s just one slice of the food service business that we interpret here,” Gutman likes to say, but the diner exhibit is clearly the museum’s highlight.

This is fitting, since the history of the diner began, after all, right here in Providence—with a horse-drawn wagon, a menu and, as they say, a dream. In 1872, an enterprising man named Walter Scott introduced the first “night lunch wagon.” Coming out at dusk, the lunch wagons would pick up business after restaurants closed, serving workers on the late shift, newspapermen, theatergoers, anyone out and about after dark and hungry for an inexpensive hot meal. A fellow would get his food from the wagon’s window and eat sitting on the curb. Gaining popularity, the lunch wagons evolved into “rolling restaurants,” with a few seats added within, first by Samuel Jones in 1887. Folks soon started referring to them as “lunch cars,” which then became the more genteel-sounding “dining cars,” which was then, around 1924, shortened to the moniker “diner.”

One distinction between a diner and a coffee shop is that the former is traditionally factory-built and transported to its location, rather than constructed on-site. The first stationary lunch car, circa 1913, was made by Jerry O’Mahony, founder of one of the first of a dozen factories in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts that manufactured and shipped all the diners in the United States. At their peak in the 1950s, there were 6,000 across the country, as far-flung as Lakewood, Colorado and San Diego, though the highest concentration remained in the Northeast; today, there are only about 2,000, with New Jersey holding the title for most “diner-supplied” state, at 600-plus. New ones are still made occasionally, though, by the three remaining factories, and old ones are painstakingly restored by people like Gutman, who has worked on some 80 diners and currently has a couple of projects going, like the Owl Diner in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the alley (on the side).

While Gutman is diplomatically reluctant to identify his favorite diner, one of his mainstays is Casey’s of Natick, Massachusetts, the country’s oldest operating diner. “They’ve supported five generations of a family on ten stools,” he says, gesturing to a photograph of the 10-by-20 ½ -half-foot, all oak-interior dining car, constructed as a horse-drawn lunch wagon in 1922, and bought secondhand five years later by Fred Casey and moved from Framingham to its current location four miles away. In the 1980s, when Gutman’s daughter Lucy was little, no sooner had they pulled up to the counter at Casey’s but Fred’s great-grandson Patrick would automatically slide a package of chocolate chip cookies down to Lucy, pour her a chocolate milk, and get her grilled cheese sandwich going on the grill. “If you go to a diner, yes, it’s a quick experience,” Gutman explains “But it’s not an anonymous experience.”

That intangible, yet distinctive sense of community captures what Gutman calls the ordinary person’s story. “Without ordinary people, how would the world run? Politicians have to go to diners to connect. What’s the word on the street? In diners, you get people from all walks of life, a real cross-section.” And while any menu around the country can be counted on for staples like ham and eggs and meatloaf—and, back in the day, pickled tongue and asparagus on toast—a region’s local flavor is also represented by its diners’ cuisine: scrod in New England, crab cakes in Maryland, grits down South.

The changing times are reflected on the diner menu, too: the Washington, D.C. chain Silver Diner introduced “heart-healthy” items in 1989 and recently announced that it would supply its kitchens with locally grown foods; the Capitol Diner, serving the working-class residents of Lynn, Massachusetts, since 1928, added quesadillas to its menu five years ago; today there are all-vegetarian diners and restored early 20th-century diners that serve exclusively Thai food.

If the essential diner ethos is maintained in the midst of such innovations, Gutman approves. But, purist that he is, he’ll gladly call out changes that don’t pass muster. Diners with kitsch, games, gumball machines or other “junk” frustrate him. “You don’t need that kind of stuff in a diner! You don’t go there to be transported into an arcade! You go there to be served some food, and to eat.”

And there you have the simplest definition of what, exactly, this iconic American eatery is. “It’s a friendly place, usually mom-and-pop with a sole proprietor, that serves basic, home-cooked, fresh food, for good value,” Gutman explains. “In my old age, I’ve become less of a diner snob”—itself a seeming contradiction in terms—“which, I think, is probably a good thing.”

THE BEATLES “IN MY LIFE”

BEATLES HITS

The Beatles

Biography

No band has influenced pop culture the way the Beatles have. They were one of the best things to happen in the twentieth century, let alone the Sixties. They were youth personified. They were unmatched innovators who were bigger than both Jesus and rock & roll itself: During the week of April 4, 1964, the #Beatles held the first five slots on the Billboard Singles chart; they went on to sell more than a billion records; and 2000’s 1, a compilation of the Beatles Number One hits, hit Number One in 35 countries and went on to become the best-selling album of the 2000s.

Every record was a shock when it came out. Compared to rabid R&B evangelists like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles arrived sounding like nothing else. They had already absorbed Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry, but they were also writing their own songs. They made writing your own material expected, rather than exceptional. As musicians, the Beatles proved that rock & roll could embrace a limitless variety of harmonies, structures, and sounds; virtually every rock experiment has some precedent on Beatles records. As a unit the Beatles were a synergistic combination: Paul McCartney’s melodic bass lines, Ringo Starr’s slaphappy no-rolls drumming, George Harrison’s rockabilly-style guitar leads, John Lennon’s assertive rhythm guitar — and their four fervent voices. As personalities, they defined and incarnated Sixties style: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic. Their music, from the not-so-simple love songs they started with to their later perfectionistic studio extravaganzas, set new standards for both commercial and artistic success in pop.

#Lennon was performing with his amateur skiffle group the Quarrymen at a church picnic on July 6, 1957, in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton when he met McCartney, whom he later invited to join his group; soon they were writing songs together, such as “The One After 909.” By the year’s end #McCartney had convinced Lennon to let Harrison join their group, the name of which was changed to Johnny and the Moondogs in 1958. In 1960 an art-school friend of Lennon’s, Stu Sutcliffe, became their bassist. Sutcliffe couldn’t play a note but had recently sold one of his paintings for a considerable sum, which the group, now rechristened the Silver Beetles (from which “Silver” was dropped a few months later, and “Beetles” amended to “Beatles”), used to upgrade its equipment.

##Tommy Moore was their drummer until Pete Best replaced him in August 1960. Once Best had joined, the band made its first of four trips to Hamburg, Germany. In December Harrison was deported back to England for being underage and lacking a work permit, but by then their 30-set weeks on the stages of Hamburg beer houses had honed and strengthened their repertoire (mostly #Chuck Berry, ##Little Richard, #Carl Perkins, and #Buddy Holly covers), and on February 21, 1961, they debuted at the #Cavern club on Mathew Street in #Liverpool, beginning a string of nearly 300 performances there over the next couple of years.

In April 1961 they again went to Hamburg, where Sutcliffe (the first of the Beatles to wear his hair in the long, shaggy style that came to be known as the Beatle haircut) left the group to become a painter, while McCartney switched from rhythm guitar to bass. The Beatles returned to Liverpool as a quartet in July. Sutcliffe died from a brain hemorrhage in Hamburg less than a year later.

The Beatles had been playing regularly to packed houses at the Cavern when they were spotted on November 9 by Brian Epstein (b. Sep. 19, 1934, Liverpool). After being discharged from the British Army on medical grounds, Epstein had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London for a year before returning to Liverpool to manage his father’s record store.

The request he received for a German import single entitled “My Bonnie” (which the Beatles had recorded a few months earlier in Hamburg, backing singer Tony Sheridan and billed as the Beat Brothers) convinced him to check out the group. Epstein was surprised to discover not only that the Beatles weren’t German but that they were one of the most popular local bands in Liverpool. Within two months he became their manager. Epstein cleaned up their act, eventually replacing black leather jackets, tight jeans, and pompadours with collarless gray Pierre Cardin suits and mildly androgynous haircuts.

Epstein tried landing the Beatles a record contract, but nearly every label in Europe rejected the group. In May 1962, however, producer George Martin (b. Jan. 3, 1926, North London, Eng.) signed the group to EMI’s Parlophone subsidiary. Pete Best, then considered the group’s undisputed sex symbol, was asked to leave the group on August 16, 1962, and Ringo Starr, drummer with a popular Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, was added, just in time for the group’s first recording session. On September 11 the Beatles cut two originals, “Love Me Do” b/w “P.S. I Love You,” which became their first U.K. Top 20 hit in October. In early 1963 “Please Please Me” went to Number Two, and they recorded an album of the same name in one 10-hour session on February 11, 1963. With the success of their third English single, “From Me to You” (Number One), the British record industry coined the term “Merseybeat” (after the river that runs through Liverpool) for groups such as the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and the Searchers.

By mid-year the Beatles were given billing over Roy Orbison on a national tour, and the hysterical outbreaks of Beatlemania had begun. Following their first tour of Europe in October, they moved to London with Epstein. Constantly mobbed by screaming fans, the Beatles required police protection almost any time they were seen in public. Late in the year “She Loves You” became the biggest-selling single in British history (in the years since, only six other singles have sold more copies there). In November 1963 the group performed before the Queen Mother at the Royal Command Variety Performance.

EMI’s American label, Capitol, had not released the group’s 1963 records (which Martin licensed to independents like Vee-Jay and Swan with little success) but was finally persuaded to release its fourth single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and Meet the Beatles (identical to the Beatles’ second British album, With the Beatles) in January 1964 and to invest $50,000 in promotion for the then unknown British act. The album and the single became the Beatles’ first U.S. chart-toppers. On February 7 screaming mobs met them at New York City’s Kennedy Airport, and more than 70 million people watched each of their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9 and 16. In April 1964 “Can’t Buy Me Love” became the first record to top American and British charts simultaneously, and that same month the Beatles held the top five positions on Billboard singles chart (“Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Twist and Shout,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Please Please Me”).

Their first movie,# A Hard Day’s Night (directed by Richard Lester), opened in America in August; it grossed $1.3 million in its first week. The band was aggressively merchandised – Beatle wigs, Beatle clothes, Beatle dolls, lunch boxes, a cartoon series — from which, because of Epstein’s ineptitude at business, the band made surprisingly little money. The Beatles also opened the American market to such British Invasion groups as the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks.

By 1965 Lennon and McCartney rarely wrote songs together, although by contractual and personal agreement songs by either of them were credited to both. The Beatles toured Europe, North America, the Far East, and Australia that year. Their second movie, #Help! (also directed by Lester), was filmed in England, Austria, and the Bahamas in the spring and opened in the U.S. in August. On August 15 they performed to 55,600 fans at New York’s Shea Stadium, setting a record for largest concert audience. McCartney’s “Yesterday” (Number One, 1965) would become one of the most often covered songs ever written.

In June the #Queen of England had announced that the Beatles would be awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire). The announcement sparked some controversy — some MBE holders returned their medal — but on October 26, 1965, the ceremony took place at Buckingham Palace. (Lennon returned his medal in 1969 as an antiwar gesture. Interestingly, even though he rejected the medal, the honor itself cannot be returned; Lennon technically remained an MBE.)

With 1965’s Rubber Soul, the Beatles’ ambitions began to extend beyond love songs and pop formulas. Their success led adults to consider them, along with #Bob Dylan, spokesmen for youth culture, and their lyrics grew more poetic and somewhat more political.

In summer 1966 controversy erupted when a remark Lennon had made to a British newspaper reporter months before was widely reported in the U.S. The quote — “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now” — incited denunciations and Beatles record bonfires. The anti-Beatles backlash was particularly intense in the U.S., where the group was set to begin a tour just two weeks after the controversy erupted, and included death threats against the group. Largely out of concern for the safety of his fellow band members, Lennon apologized at a Chicago press conference.

The Beatles gave up touring after an August 29, 1966, concert at San Francisco’s #Candlestick Park and made the rest of their music in the studio, where they had begun to experiment with exotic instrumentation (“Norwegian Wood,” 1965, had featured sitar) and tape abstractions such as the reversed tracks on “Rain.” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” part of a double-sided single released in February 1967 to fill the unusually long gap between albums, featured an astonishing display of electronically altered sounds and hinted at what was to come. With “Taxman” and “Love You To” on Revolver, Harrison began to emerge as a songwriter.

It took four months and $75,000 to record #Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band using a then state-of-the-art four-track tape recorder and building each cut layer by layer. Released in June 1967, it was hailed as serious art for its “concept” and its range of styles and sounds, a lexicon of pop and electronic noises; such songs as “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “A Day in the Life” were carefully examined for hidden meanings. The album spent 15 weeks at Number One (longer than any of their others) and has sold over 8 million copies. On June 25, 1967, the Beatles recorded their new single, “All You Need Is Love,” before an international television audience of 400 million, as part of a broadcast called Our World.

On August 27, 1967 – while the four were in Wales beginning their six-month involvement with @##Transcendental Meditation and the Maharishi #Mahesh Yogi (which took them to India for two months in early 1968) — Epstein died alone in his London flat from an overdose of sleeping pills, later ruled accidental. Shaken by Epstein’s death, the Beatles retrenched under McCartney’s leadership in the fall and filmed #Magical Mystery Tour, which was aired by BBC-TV on December 26, 1967, and later released in the U.S. as a feature film. Although the telefilm was panned by British critics, fans, and Queen Elizabeth herself, the soundtrack album contained their most cryptic work yet in “#I Am the Walrus,” a Lennon composition.

As the Beatles’ late-1967 single “Hello Goodbye” went to Number One in both the U.S. and Britain, the group launched the Apple clothes boutique in London. McCartney called the retail effort “Western communism”; the boutique closed in July 1968. Like their next effort, Apple Corps Ltd. (formed in January 1968 and including Apple Records, which signed James Taylor, Mary Hopkin, and Badfinger), it was plagued by mismanagement. In July the group faced its last hysterical crowds at the premiere of Yellow Submarine, an animated film by Czech avant-garde designer and artist Heinz Edelmann featuring four new Beatles songs; a revised soundtrack featuring nine extra songs was released in 1999 (Number 15).

In August they released McCartney’s “Hey Jude” (Number One), backed by Lennon’s “Revolution” (Number 12), which sold over 6 million copies before the end of 1968 — their most popular single. Meanwhile, the group had been working on the double album The Beatles (frequently called the White Album), which showed their divergent directions. The rifts were artistic — Lennon moving toward brutal confessionals, McCartney leaning toward pop melodies, Harrison immersed in Eastern spirituality — and personal, as Lennon drew closer to his wife-to-be, Yoko Ono. Lennon and Ono’sTwo Virgins (with its full frontal and back nude cover photos) was released the same month as The Beatles and stirred up so much outrage that the LP had to be sold wrapped in brown paper. (The Beatles, went to Number One, Two Virgins peaked at Number 124.)

The Beatles attempted to smooth over their differences in early 1969 at filmed recording sessions. When the project fell apart hundreds of hours of studio time later, no one could face editing the tapes (a project that eventually fell to record producer Phil Spector), and “Get Back” (Number One, 1969) was the only immediate release. Released in spring 1970, Let It Be is essentially a documentary of their breakup, including an impromptu January 30, 1969, rooftop concert at Apple Corps headquarters, their last public performance as the Beatles.

By spring 1969 Apple was losing thousands of pounds each week. Over McCartney’s objections, the other three brought in manager Allen Klein to straighten things out; one of his first actions was to package nonalbum singles as Hey Jude. With money matters temporarily out of mind, the four joined forces in July and August 1969 to record Abbey Road, featuring an extended suite as well as more hits, including Harrison’s much-covered “Something” (Number Three, 1969). While its release that fall spurred a “Paul Is Dead” rumor based on clues supposedly left throughout their work, Abbey Road became the Beatles’ best-selling album, at 9 million copies. Meanwhile, internal bickering persisted. In September Lennon told the others, “I’m leaving the group. I’ve had enough. I want a divorce.” But he was persuaded to keep quiet while their business affairs were untangled. On April 10, 1970, McCartney released his first solo album and publicly announced the end of the Beatles. At the same time, Let It Be finally surfaced, becoming the group’s 14th Number One album (a postbreakup compilation would become their 15th in 1973) and yielding the Beatles’ 18th and 19th chart-topping singles, “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road.”

Throughout the Seventies, as repackages of Beatles music continued to sell, the four were hounded by bids and pleas for a reunion. Lennon’s murder by a mentally disturbed fan on December 8, 1980, ended those speculations. In 1988 the Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. McCartney, citing business conflicts with the two other surviving members, did not attend. Relations between him and Harrison, in particular, had been strained for some time.

In January 1994 Goldmine magazine reported that McCartney, Harrison, and #Starr had begun recording music for a long-rumored Beatles documentary the previous August, with more secret sessions scheduled. There were other signs that the three band members were on the mend — when Lennon was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 1994, for instance, McCartney did the honors (McCartney himself was inducted in 1999). Later in 1994 Live at the BBC was released, featuring 56 songs the Beatles performed on the British radio between 1962 and 1965. It debuted at Number One in the U.K.; in the U.S., it debuted and peaked at Number Three.

#The Beatles Anthology, the long-awaited six-hour television special, was broadcast over three nights in November 1995, coinciding with the release of the George Martin-compiled double-CD Anthology 1 (Number One), which featured alternate takes, demos, and rare tracks, and premiered the first new song by John, Paul, George, and Ringo since 1970. “Free as a Bird” (Number Six, 1995), a demo recorded by Lennon in 1977, was completed by the other three and produced by Jeff Lynne; it became the Beatles 34th Top 10 single. Lennon’s lyrics didn’t extend much beyond the title, and so Harrison and McCartney collaborated on lyrics for a new bridge.

Two additional double CDs, Anthology 2 and 3 (both Number One), followed in 1996, as well as an extended videotape version of the documentary. Anthology 2‘s “Real Love” (again a Lennon demo, from 1979, with modern additions by the others) reached Number 11 and became the group’s 23rd gold single (the most of any group).

The Liverpool juggernaut continued to roll on in 2000: the Beatles became the highest certified act of all time, with over 113 million albums sold in America (which grew to 170 million albums in 2008); a coffee table book, The Beatles Anthology, topped the New York Times bestseller list; and 1, a collection of the band’s Number One hit songs, became the Beatles’ 19th chart-topping album, selling 25 million copies by 2005.

On November 29, 2001, George Harrison, diagnosed with lung cancer in the late 1990s, became the second Beatle to pass away. Three years later Capitol Records released all of the Beatles’ U.S. albums (in both stereo and original mono versions) as two box sets, The Capitol Albums, Vols. 1 and 2. In 2006, George Martin and his son Giles produced a set of Beatles remixes, Love, for the soundtrack to Cirque du Soleil’s theater production of the same name. The following year, McCartney and Starr appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live to talk about the project; they joined Beatles widows Ono and Olivia Harrison in Las Vegas to celebrate the Love production’s first anniversary.

Until 2007, the Beatles’ #Apple Corp. was in legal limbo with the Apple, Inc. computer company over use of the name. Apple Corp. had sued Apple, Inc. after the computer company opened its online iTunes music store; one result of the suit was that the Beatles’ group and solo music was not made available for digital download. In February 2007, the two sides came to an agreement. Apple, Inc. would retain ownership of the name and license it back to the Apple Corp. record label. By October, all of the Beatles’ solo works were available on iTunes, but as of early 2010 the Beatles catalogue was still not available on iTunes.

September 9, 2009 was a day of 21st century Beatlemania: Apple/EMI released remastered versions of the band’s studio albums, with dramatically improved sound. (Mono versions were also available, though only as a box.) Also that day, The Beatles Rock Band video game hit shelves, featuring 45 Beatle songs; by the end of 2009, it had sold more than one million copies worldwide.

McCartney and Starr continued to tour and record throughout the 2000s. McCartney, who is reportedly a billionaire, released three solo albums during the decade as well as three live albums, including Good Evening New York City, which documented the inaugural concerts at New York’s Citi Field in 2009. Starr released three albums in the 2000s, as well as 2010’s Y Not. He appeared with McCartney at several events, including 2002’s Concert for George, a charitable event held on the first anniversary of Harrison’s death.

Portions of this biography appeared in The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001).

Timelessness is a quality we all strive for in our images. It’s a quality earned, not given, through the time and effort put into conceptualizing, visualizing and capturing an image.

And when it is earned, the results are phenomenal… oftentimes winding back the clock or making time seem almost irrelevant to the image. Such is the case for the work of #Michael Crouser, a Minnesota-based photographer who has spent the past eight years documenting cattle ranching families in Colorado.

The photographs Crouser captures leave us guessing at when they were taken and what gear was used. #Monochrome, filled with distinct tones and dramatic contrast, the images seem to almost pop off the screen.

Speaking with the #Huffington Post, Crouser was asked about the lifestyles and work of the cattle ranching families he’s spent just shy of a decade documenting.

His reply, as you might expect, was that the work these families do is not for the faint of heart; however, for generations it’s all they’ve done, and therefore all they know. They will continue to live “the simple life” for as long as they can until developers begin taking the land away piece by piece.

On that note, Crouser goes on to point out that such a lifestyle probably isn’t going to be one that his subjects’ children and grandchildren will have.

“As the land in this region of Colorado becomes more valuable and practical for development than for growing hay and grazing cattle, ranching will disappear,” he tells Huff Po. “Along with these families, their operations and traditional ways of working.”

Below is a collection of images Crouser has been kind enough to share with us:

Barrel Daredevils of Niagara Falls

Tumbling in a barrel over Niagara Falls is a freeway to fame for a select group of crackpots and egomaniacs. No great skill is required: just build a really strong barrel, fill it with a lot of padding, and figure out a way to get into the river above the Falls without getting caught. Twenty minutes later, you’re a star.

Annie Edson Taylor and her barrel.

Of course, as the Niagara Daredevils Exhibit in Toronto makes clear, it’s not quite that easy.

Greeting visitors to the exhibit is the red, white, and blue “Death Barrel” of George Stathakis, who survived the Falls but died of suffocation waiting to be rescued (His barrel companion, a turtle named Sonny Boy, survived).

Peculiar stories are everywhere in the exhibit, their details offered in gaudy tabloid-style displays. Bobby Leach was the first man to survive a barrel trip, but died later when he slipped on an orange peel. Karel Soucek went over the Falls with a case of beer and survived, but six months later he dropped in the same barrel from the roof of the Astrodome and died.

Charles Stephens unwisely tied an anvil to his feet as ballast; his barrel survived, but all that was left of Charles was his tattooed right arm. “He was,” reads an accompanying sign, “apparently torn apart.”

Risk-takers have launched themselves over the Falls on a jet ski, a kayak, and a barrel made of inflated inner tubes named “The Thing.” All of them died, but the kayak escaped with just a dent.

Weaver’s Rapids Queen.

The first human to go over the Falls and live was Annie Edson Taylor, who did it on her 63rd birthday. “I was on the brink of the awful precipice,” says a disembodied voice at Annie’s display, apparently reading from her account. “The barrel seemed to pause for one second… The sensation was one of indescribable horror….” The exhibit offers a life-size cutout of Annie next to an exact replica of her custom-built oak barrel, which survived the Falls but did not survive a subsequent custody battle.

Plunge O’ Sphere.

William “Red” Hill was a fulcrum of daredevilry: he witnessed Anne Taylor’s plunge; he rescued “Smiling Jean” Lussier after he went over the Falls (his barrel is in a museum on the American side); he re-used the Death Barrel of George Stathakis to ride the “Boneyard of Niagara” Whirlpool and was saved from the Whirlpool by his son, who later died in his own attempt to conquer the Falls. Red’s barrel is covered with a hand-painted resume of life accomplishments: “Gassed and wounded four times in World War I.” “Rescued 177 bodies from the Niagara River.” “Saved girl from burning house 1896″ (He would have been just eight years old).

Dave Mundy’s “no frills” barrel was built, according to his display, “to show the media he could survive” (He did). Another of Mundy’s barrels resembles an oversized aluminum beer keg, and is open — daring visitors to play daredevil by crawling inside. A third Mundy barrel resembles a large hot dog or foot-long sub; it got stuck on the brink of the Falls, and Mundy later agreed that this probably saved his life.

For all it’s insanity — or perhaps because of it — going over Niagara Falls in a barrel has been treated relatively lightly by the authorities. William Fitzgerald, who rode his “Plunge O’ Sphere” over the Falls in 1961, was fined only $100. One daredevil quoted in the exhibit called the fines, “a cheap price to pay to get into the record books.” Today the maximum fine in Canada is $10,000 and the Niagara Falls Parks Commission strongly discourages barrel daredevils, which has apparently triggered some resentment.

A recorded TV news broadcast in the exhibit strikes a defensive tone: “A spokesman for the Niagara Falls Parks Commission says the Commission is not a party pooper.”

Barrel Daredevils of Niagara Falls

IMAX Theatre Niagara Falls

In the lobby of IMAX Theatre Niagara Falls, which is at the base of the impossible-to-miss Skylon Tower. Up the hill from Horseshoe Falls, on Fallsview Blvd between Murray and Robinson Sts. Has its own parking lot.

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Ana Christy

http://about.me/anaflowerchild

poet and writer

i am a "beat" poet and writer with 40 books of poetry published-and 3 U.S. and European tours-my work has been studied in soviet georgia and colleges around the world-I was co-publisher of "ALPLA BEAT PRESS" with my late husband DAVE CHRISTY, and have an internet show on www.luver.com called "The Canman says goodnight."

"EENIE MEENIE MINEE MOE" my novel is on amazon.com. I am having my second novel "NODDY'S BAR AND GRILL" published soon.

when i am not writing i make collages-watch movies-and cook indian food with my boyfriend and my cat..